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"Consider our current thinking about taxes and government spending. We
seem caught up in a “family belt-tightening” metaphor, in which the
nation is a family that has outspent its income and is trying to get
back in control. The family must cut profligate spending, save and pay
down debts. It’s a powerful thought, of course, because we know that
mismanagement of household finances can lead to a family’s ruin.

But perhaps the most important lesson conveyed by the great economist John Maynard Keynes
is that this metaphor, when applied to the national economy, is
fundamentally misleading: what is smart for the family is not smart for
society as a whole. This idea, sometimes known as the paradox of thrift,
is that when we all tighten our belts at once, the economy is so
weakened that we end up failing to save more, and instead are all worse
off. When that happens, some collective action — government stimulus —
is needed."

1. “The idea that you’ve got private equity companies that come in and take companies apart so they can make profits and have people lose their jobs, that’s not what the Republican Party’s about.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/12/12]
2. “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.” — Newt Gingrich [New York Times, 1/17/12]
3. “Instead of trying to work with them to try to find a way to keep the jobs and to get them back on their feet, it’s
all about how much money can we make, how quick can we make it, and
then get out of town and find the next carcass to feed upon” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]
4. “We find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” — Newt Gingrich [Globe and Mail, 1/9/12]
5. “Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips —
whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his
company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/9/12]
6) “He claims he created 100,000 jobs. The Washington Post, two days
ago, reported in their fact check column that he gets three Pinocchios.
Now, a Pinocchio is what you get from The Post if you’re not telling the truth.” — Newt Gingrich [1/13/12, NBC News]
7. “There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure
and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business, and I
happen to think that’s indefensible” — Rick Perry [National Journal,
1/10/12]
8. “If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money
he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his
years, then I would be glad to then listen to him” — Newt Gingrich [Mediaite, 12/14/11]
9. “If you’re a victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/8/12]
10. “They’re vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb
waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat
the carcass. They leave with that and they leave the skeleton” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

"I don't think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits…All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size."